But at this moment I remembered the pistol my father had given me in the morning. I had been true to my word, and hadn't taken it out during the day; but now, so unreasoning was I, it brought me extraordinary relief as I drew it from its hiding-place, and carefully loading it slipped it under my pillow; though what protection it could be against the impalpable destiny that overshadowed me I didn't stay to consider. I only know I was very much eased at heart, and was soon out of my clothes and in bed. My father had at last told me the tale of the mysterious manuscript, as he had promised me he would some day do; and also, as he had said it would, it made me dream. Indeed it would have been strange if such a story with such associations to give it body and shape and presence hadn't made me dream, for my mind was full of vivid pictures, not merely half-formed filmy mists of imagination. There were eyes looking at me, there were hands feeling for me; and the eyes and the hands were those of the old witch, Bite-in-the-Dark. They were very real, for I had seen them. And all the strange terror of the circumstances under which I had seen them stirred my soul to a foreboding uneasiness of imminent things. And even the pistol which I fingered under my pillow recalled that awful moment when my father's pistol had roared out in my hand, and the hut had filled with screams and clamour. What wonder then, that with everything focusing back upon that night, I returned in dreams to the child I had been, and was once again wrapped in the rug before the fire, while my father's voice waned and strengthened through my dozing, and the face of the Mad Captain, horrified by the haunting voices of the murdered men, glared at me insanely from the darkness, distorted by the leaping firelight into a frantic picture of fear and madness and remorse. But I can't say what my dreams were, for they were inextricably entangled; but I know that I awoke more than once in a sweat of terror, trying to shake off some nameless thing which had fastened about my throat. And now I was away with the doomed party seeking for the treasure in the valley of the kings, and now I was on that fever-stricken ship waiting dumbly for my hour to strike, and now I was the priest himself hiding that cursed gold deep under the earth; and turning to flee I came face to face with that hateful hag with the black hollow sockets and the flaming eyes, and the knife cunningly hidden in the folds of her dress. For always my dreams came back to that. Her evil presence haunted me in all my mazed wanderings, either visibly at some unexpected turn, or shadowingly so that I knew she was beside me or behind me though I couldn't see her. And that was the worse evil of the two; for at such times the agony was lingering, and the enemy seemed too powerful for me, fighting with unearthly weapons against which my knife and pistol were useless as thistledown; but when